Cleveland Bucket List in familiar territory

Group helps fans of NE Ohio experience region's unique
sites

The Cleveland Bucket List visits some of the area's unique sites. Participants explored the waters of the Cuyahoga
River, for example.

What's been on your to-do list for what seems like ages, yet you just haven't been able to get around to it?
Three gentlemen — Bob Aber, David Akers and Jeff Nischwitz, the founders of event producer 3 Guys Present — want to know, as they are on a mission to provide fellow Clevelanders the opportunity to see some of the city's most unique spots.
They're doing it through the Cleveland Bucket List, a 3 Guys spinoff that held its first event last September.
So far, the Cleveland Bucket List has opened attendees' eyes to the Cuyahoga River (and a super-choppy Lake Erie); the Franklin Castle, an Ohio City landmark long thought to be haunted; and the newly renovated Capitol Theatre, which featured a showing of the Cleveland classic, “A Christmas Story.”
“All three of us share an abiding love for Cleveland, and we get frustrated by people having negative images of the city,” Mr. Akers said. “We looked around, and while all three of us do a lot around town, there are plenty of things we haven't gotten to.”
Messrs. Akers and Aber — colleagues at Warrensville Heights-based The Collaborent Group, a group purchasing facilitator for local government entities, nonprofits and businesses — are native Clevelanders and Mr. Nischwitz, an attorney and founder of Think Again Coaching, is a transplant going on 25 years in the city.
The firm 3 Guys Present was founded in January 2008, and it will hold its 10th event next month. It produces what the trio calls “highly relational” networking events: Everyone invites one person, and if you're invited, you're allowed to invite one person. Nametags purposely don't include company names.
“If that company name is not there, then it starts with the people,” Mr. Nischwitz said. “From there, it's figuring out what you can do together.”

A different experience

Bucket List events — the ideas for which are submitted by friends and colleagues or generated over a few beers — are more experiential, Mr. Nischwitz said. The events are activity-based, so it's a bit harder to develop those relationships when experiencing something new.
That's not to say it doesn't happen: At the first Bucket List event, a September “three-hour tour” of Lake Erie that quickly turned into a Cuyahoga River tour due to a choppy lake, Chris Tjotjos made a handful of new connections he still uses.
Mr. Tjotjos, president, CEO and owner of Westlake-based Logos Communications, supplied the boat for the tour's 20 or so participants and said after knowing just one person before the event, he's still using lessons learned from a book recommended by one of the participants.
“These events are good ways to tell Forbes to jump in their own lake,” Mr. Tjotjos said, referring to the magazine's designation of Cleveland as the United States' most miserable city.
Tim Schmidt, meanwhile, met the person he'd eventually hire as the new executive vice president for WestPark Direct, his downtown Cleveland business-to-business telemarketing outfit, during the Franklin Castle event, which also included dinner at Momocho. (The Capitol Theatre event was paired with dinner at Stone Mad, a new Detroit Shoreway restaurant; “We're trying to marry unique things, like a unique destination and a unique restaurant,” Mr. Akers said.)
“Unlike most things, these are events you actually look forward to,” said Mr. Schmidt, who also attended the boat tour. “It's interesting to do something I've never done.”
Proving the Bucket List events won't just be Cleveland landmarks, the trio is preparing its next event — the Bushwood Open — for April 14. Named after the fictional country club in the cult classic “Caddyshack,” the event is a traditional golf outing — 19th hole, skins game, mulligans available for purchase — at a mini-golf course, Firefly's Minigolf at Westfield SouthPark mall in Strongsville.
“We've created things that don't exist in Cleveland,” Mr. Nischwitz said. “There are lots of cool things to do in Cleveland; someone just has to do them. We'll do them.”